


The Wastelands

by panem_et_circenses



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Outlaw Leader Bellamy Blake
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-19
Updated: 2016-12-19
Packaged: 2018-09-09 16:32:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8899546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/panem_et_circenses/pseuds/panem_et_circenses
Summary: Bellamy Blake leads a band of rebels and outlaws in the outskirts of society on a post-apocalyptic, war-torn Earth. Clarke Griffin, unofficial princess of the gated community, Arkadia, gets dropped at his feet one day after being caught trying to steal morphine from his med stash. (Originally started as a one...and then two...and then three shot mini AU from Get Me Some of That.)





	

“You really think you can shoot me, kid?” Emerson sneers, taking two steps closer so that the muzzle of Clarke’s gun is flush with the center of his chest.

“Yes.” Clarke says, voice steady, despite the fact that the only thing she’s thinking is _no, no, no, no._

Her voice, like her hand, are steady because Bellamy taught her. How to lie with not only her words, but her body.

He also taught her how to do this – kill a man. She _can_ do it.

Knows the mechanics, knows exactly how much pressure she needs to put on the trigger, knows that she actually needs to move the gun about two inches to her right to hit Emerson dead in the heart so that he’ll bleed out in less than four minutes, but she could also move the gun about eight inches up, shoot him square in the throat and he’ll bleed out in less than two.

But _can_ and will are two very different things.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

_Six Months Earlier_

“Got something for you, boss.” Miller’s voice rings out from down the hall, strained by something, Bellamy thinks, like whatever he’s got is a physical strain to carry.

“Great.” Bellamy groans. Miller never brings anything but trouble. Ever since the war and the rise of Arkadia – the gated, “safe” community behind the thick metal walls – not long after, Bellamy’s had nothing but trouble on his hands out in the Wastelands. 

He’s done his best to make a safe life for himself and for Octavia. In the last few years, he’s carved out a section of territory and built up his own army. It’d be a stretch to call it safe, but in his sector, there’s at least order. He has respect because he’s demanded it and paid his dues, often in blood, and now he has the pleasure of working his ass of day in and day out to handle the lovely little troubles that Miller and the rest of his men drop at his doorstep.

What could it be today? More grounders hunting his people? Maybe Arkadia’s sent out another “search and rescue” party to kidnap some more children? Could be the “government” soldiers who like to think they’re still fighting for something trying to invade his territory. Some people are willing to cling to anything these days.

If he’s lucky, maybe some idiot brought home another bushel of hallucinogenic berries and everyone is high out of their minds again. That’d almost be a treat.

The moment that Miller bursts through the doorway, Bellamy sees the reason for his strain. He’s got an armful of squirmy blonde thrown over his shoulder – a short-looking girl who’s clearly cursing the both of them ten ways to Sunday, even with her mouth gagged. She forces herself into a contorted position, back arched high and neck straining upward, so that she can take a look around the room and _damn_ , if looks could kill he imagines the entire compound would be dead at the hands of this girl.

“What now?” Bellamy asks, hand coming up to rub between his brows. As if he didn’t have a big enough headache already. It’s not like they’re just weeks away from winter and Murphy just burned down one of the food storage buildings. Oh wait, that’s exactly what’s happening.

“Caught this one trying to steal medical supplies. Morphine, I think it was. Thing is, I’ve never seen her before, so I knew she couldn’t be from around here. Then when I got a closer look I noticed the wristband.”

Bellamy rises to his feet and stalks toward the pair. When he’s close enough, he pulls the girl’s bound hands into his own, glad all over again that she’s gagged because he’s pretty sure she might bite him otherwise. Sure enough, she’s got the shiny tech-laden metal bracelet latched onto her wrist that marks her as Arkadian. “If you’ve got one of those, what on earth are you doing out here, little princess?”

She only glares and wriggles a bit, one of her knees connecting with Miller’s back in a solid _thud_ since he’s still got her thrown over his shoulder. It takes some maneuvering, but together they work to set her down in one of the chairs, grabbing a few lengths of rope to restrain her before taking the cloth gag out of her mouth.

Surprisingly, now that she has the freedom, she doesn’t scream for help or to be released. Just glares at them even harder.

“Want me to stick around for this?” Miller asks as Bellamy circles the girl.

Bellamy gives her another once over, considering, before shaking his head. “No, go back to your post.” If she tries to run, he can handle her. She might act tough, but she’s a wisp of a thing and they don’t train ‘em to fight in Arkadia.

“Let’s start easy.” Bellamy offers once he hears Miller’s footfalls fade into the distance. “You got a name?”

“Clarke.” She offers bitingly, too quick and too smooth to be a lie.

“Clarke.” Bellamy considers the name for a moment. It makes something tickle at the back of his consciousness, something that he wants to work on until he can pull it into the light, but he doesn’t have time for that right now, so he forges on. “Why are you in the Wastelands, Clarke?”

She snorts. “For the fresh air.” Because the weekly dust storms make the air out here so much fresher than inside the gate where air scrubbers are on 24/7. _Of course._ Bellamy snorts.

“Arkadia must know you’re out here. After all, that’s what the nifty little piece of jewelry you’ve got does, right? Relays all of your vitals, allows them to keep track of your location. If you got floated, they’d remove it so you couldn’t trade it. So that leaves us with two options, either Arkadia doesn’t _care_ that you’re here, or they’re the ones who sent you.”

Clarke clenches her jaw, eyes narrowing, but staying focused on him.

Bellamy scrutinizes her, enjoys the way that she squirms some more under his gaze. “No, no, they didn’t send you. If they did, you’d have orders on what to do if you got caught. Arkadia doesn’t like loose ends. That thing –“ he points toward the wristband “has enough access to your body that I’m sure it has some kind of self-destruct or terminate function, something lethal. A needle, I’d bet, but I’ve never been able to figure it out. If you were an Ark operative, you’d never actually let yourself be captured. So it must be the first. The Ark doesn’t care where you traipse.”

The way that Clarke’s eyes widen ever so slightly tells Bellamy that he’s right on the money. He’s gotten good at this through the years – reading people. “There’s only one reason the Ark wouldn’t care what you get up to. Clearly, you’ve got enough privilege, and they’ve got enough trust in your loyalty, that they don’t believe you’d ever do anything to compromise them, even in the Wastelands.” He thinks on it for another minute, studies her face a little more just because he can. It’s not like she’s hard to look at. The air leaves his lungs when it hits him. “Clarke. Clarke Griffin. Abby Griffin’s daughter. You’re fucking Arkadian _royalty_. You really are a princess. What the fuck’s Clarke Griffin doing stealing morphine in the Wastelands?”

“Don’t bother trying to ransom me.” She mumbles. “My mother won’t care.”

“Interesting. Okay, two new options. If mommy dearest doesn’t love you, then maybe you’re not so keen on the royal life. Maybe you wanted to get high. Morphine would do the job pretty damn well.” But then he takes another look at the clearly stubborn girl in front of him and decides that she’d never look for such a shallow escape. “No, can’t be. Are you running away, princess? Enough morphine could get you just about anything you wanted if you know the right person to trade with. It could get you anywhere you wanted to go. It makes sense.”

“God damn it.” Her arms flex and release against the ropes binding them to the arms of the chair. If she were untied she might be pounding her hands against the wood. “The drugs were for a kid, okay? Not me. This little blonde boy. He’s got a gash that’s infected so bad it might kill him if he doesn’t get his arm amputated and, while I’m not interested in letting him die, I’m sure as fuck not about to just cut his arm off with nothing to numb the pain. I wanted to find an anesthetic, but all I found was the morphine. I figured it’d at least make it bearable.”

Bellamy takes another minute to look her over. She looks him straight in the eye, unflinching under the heavy scrutiny this time. She’s telling the truth. Has to be.

He sighs, scrubs a hand down his face and admits defeat. “You can’t save everyone, but that’s not a lesson I expect you to learn in your first days in the Wastelands. If you’re going to insist on taking morphine to save the kid – though, keep in mind, he’ll probably die anyway – then we’re going to need something in return. That’s how things work out here.”

She flinches. “I’m not going to have sex with you.” For the first time since Miller carted her in, her voice sounds small.

That makes him freeze. “What?”

A little shrug, her eyes now focused on Bellamy’s shoes for the first time. “It’s not like I’ve got anything to give you – everything I own is on me right now. So I don’t know what else you could mean.”

“That’s not…” Bellamy heaves another sigh. “Your wristband – the cuff. For starters.”

“Starters?”

“If you’re Abby Griffin’s daughter and you’re planning on amputating some kid’s arm, you must think yourself some kind of doctor.”

“I’m not a doctor, but I know my way around a clinic.”

Bellamy nods. “Good. We could use someone like that around here. We do the best we can to patch up wounds, but we don’t have any medical expertise beyond some less-than-perfect stitches. If you’re leaving Arkadia behind, you’ll need a place to stay – a _safe_ place, where someone can protect you and where there’s food and people you can trust. If you’re willing to play doctor, we can give you that.”

Clarke’s eyes snap to Bellamy’s, eyebrows going up to her hairline. “You think I’m staying. You’re offering me a place to stay?”

“If you want it.” Bellamy tries his best to give her a smile to reassure her, but it’s not something that he does often anymore so it feels more like a grimace. “And you do. No one would come out into the Wastelands if they weren’t running away from something inside your fancy gates. You don’t want to go back to the Ark, so you might as well stay here.” Making her give up the wristband just virtually guarantees it.

“Just like that?” It’s hard not to see the relief in her eyes.

“Just like that.”

“I’m tied to a chair.”

Bellamy shrugs. “I’ll untie you, then.”

“I don’t think I like you.”

“I don’t think I like you, either.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Okay.”

Bellamy huffs a laugh and sets to work at the knots at her ankles.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Wastelands amaze Clarke.

She’s been sneaking through the gates of Arkadia for months now – usually not far beyond the border and not for very long, but since her father’s death she’s just felt the need to escape. To see something besides the same walls she’s been stuck in her entire life. To see someone besides the same people who’ve apparently all just been lying in wait to stab her in the back.

She could’ve gone back into Arkadia when she found the injured kid. Could _possibly_ have stolen morphine from there and gotten away with little more than a slap on the wrist, but she’s on thin ice with the Arkadian elite and they’re too meticulous with their record-keeping to not notice it missing. So she snuck further from the tall metal fence that corralled the only sorry excuse for a home she ever knew. It was dumb luck that she stumbled upon Bellamy’s med stock. 

Maybe even dumb luck that she got caught.

As they weave through the close-knit buildings of the sector, further from the tall metal fence that’s hardly looming over the horizon anymore, Clarke can’t find any scrap of remorse that she’s not returning to Arkadia instead. 

“You have lights here.” Clarke notes dumbly as they move. Bellamy’s office had been lit only by the sun before, but as it sets over the horizon a few windows light up with a glow bright enough that it can only be from electricity. Arkadia always told its residents that the glow on the horizon at night was from lingering radioactivity from the war. Clarke realizes now that it was from the Wastelands, instead.

Bellamy shrugs a few paces ahead of her. “Sinclair was a pretty decent engineer. He managed to piece together some generators after the war. There aren’t a lot of sectors that have any need for it or any semblance of organization to get it running, so fuel has been easy to come by to keep them running. He even started converting a few of them to solar before the grounders got him. Wick and I keep ‘em running now.”

“Interesting. I don’t suppose you’ve got running water here?” She’s not the grimiest she’s ever been, but Miller didn’t care much if she stayed on her feet as he dragged her to Bellamy’s office. It might be difficult to get used to not being able to shower.

“We might’ve tapped a few of your fancy city lines, yeah.”

Clarke nods. “Aren’t you worried about telling an outsider all your secrets?”

Bellamy stops to turn to her, looking perfectly relaxed. “In about ten minutes I’m going to make sure you won’t be running back to your shiny little city.” The way that his eyes track down to her wrist leaves little room to doubt what he means.

“So I’ve got ten minutes to make my move, then?”

The grin that slides across his face is absolutely lethal. “Just try and run, sweetheart. I think I might like dragging you back again.”

Clarke purses her lips, takes in Bellamy’s steady gaze and decides that he’s not kidding. She just nods and moves forward, correctly guessing that he’ll once again start guiding her where she needs to go.

“You know, your place has even got an above ground tank. The water gets _almost_ warm in the heat of the day.”

“What did I do to deserve such special treatment? Do you treat all of your thieves this way?” She asks, aiming to lighten the conversation.

“You didn’t do anything. It’s my place and what the king wants the king gets.”

She doesn’t even stop to question Bellamy’s choice of housing for her, just plows straight through into the new information. “Is that what you are? King of the sector?” Clarke’s sure that if Arkadia lied about there being lights in the Wastelands, she can’t trust anything else she learned about it. Maybe it’s not all savages and free-for-alls.

“I’m the king here as much as you were the princess in there.” He juts his chin north toward where she knows Arkadia is. Clarke can’t exactly see the walls from here, but the glow of the city lights is blinding compared to what she used to see on the horizon from the Wastelands. There’s no doubt as to where Arkadia is from the outside.

Bellamy comes to a halt in front of one of the many unassuming buildings, so Clarke comes to a stop next to him. “This is us.” The building in front of them is three stories tall, made of cream brick that’s been patched over with plain cement in some areas.

“No security?” Clarke notes as they walk straight through the open door.

Bellamy just shrugs. “If anyone gets this far looking to get a jump on me, then an extra lock or two isn’t going to stop them. Besides, if they get all the way here without me knowing about it, then I deserve whatever I get.”

Clarke holds her tongue as they ascend two flights of stairs. “The rest of the building is empty. Plenty of rooms, though – it’s a low key safe house. Central in case we need to retreat from our borders in a major incident and anyone who’s only looking for a little trouble wouldn’t dare.”

“And I’m going to live here?”

“Unless you’re still considering making a run for it.”

“Funny. I’d heard it wouldn’t make a difference even if I tried.”

Bellamy huffs a breath that sounds suspiciously like a laugh before opening up one of the seemingly nondescript doors and flipping on some lights. Inside is an apartment that is far more like the ones in Arkadia than Clarke would’ve expected. There’s a small living area with some mismatched furniture, a little kitchenette with some stools set up along a bar and a couple of doors that she assumes lead to a bedroom and a bathroom.

“Is this mine?” Clarke asks. If it’s a safe house, she figures all of the rooms must be furnished.

“Sorry, sweetheart, but this one’s mine. Take a seat at the counter.” Bellamy orders before disappearing through one of the doorways.

Clarke’s still standing in the doorway when he returns. With a wicked looking knife. She immediately regrets not following his command when she sees the knife glint in the light. Bellamy stalks toward her. There’s no other way to describe it. “Trust me?” He asks when he’s within arm’s length.

“No.” She says, but it’s a knee jerk reaction more than anything else, given that she doesn’t so much as tense up when he brings the knife down to her wrist and slips it underneath her government-issued wristband.

Bellamy doesn’t look away from Clarke’s face as he jimmies the slim blade slightly until Clarke hears a hiss followed by the sharp crack of her wristband popping open at the seam. Bellamy flips the knife and clenches it between his teeth so that he can slide the wristband off. He studies the wristband for what feels like far longer than he even studied Clarke in his office before depositing it on the nearby table with a sharp nod.

“Where’d you learn how to do that?” Clarke asks, eyeing the device. In Arkadia, they were told that they were impossible to remove – at least without maiming yourself somehow and destroying the tech.

Bellamy pulls the knife out of his teeth and smirks. “I’ve gotta keep a few tricks up my sleeve.”

Clarke frowns at him. “You know that thing doesn’t work as a weapon, right? What are you going to do with it?”

He shrugs. “Whatever I want. Your place is next door.”

Clarke drops it without pushing further. After all, the wristband isn’t of any use to her, so it shouldn’t matter where it winds up. “Which next door?” There are apartments on both sides of this one, not to mention across the hall.

Another shrug. “Pick one.”

“Morphine first?” Clarke requests. “You’ve gotten your payment. The longer we wait the slimmer his chances.” 

“You’ve got ten minutes to pick an apartment and then I’ll meet you out front. Make sure you think of anything else you’re going to need to sign this kid’s death warrant.” With that, he picks up the wristband and takes it, along with the knife, back into the other room.

It’s clearly a dismissal, so Clarke heads back into the hallway. She tries both doors on either side of Bellamy’s – they look nearly identical inside. Living room area with a couch, a couple chairs and a coffee table. Kitchen with a dining table and chairs. Bedroom with a big, inviting four-poster bed, and a dresser. Bathroom. A few lamps strewn about.

She takes the apartment further from the top of the stairs and makes a note to figure out how to scrounge up something to lock the door with – or at least keep it from being so easy to enter. The rest of Bellamy’s people might be okay with this whole concept of pride or proven strength keeping people from barging into their homes, but Clarke is decidedly not.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The surgery is a success. In the sense of Clarke is able to successfully cut off the kid’s arm without immediately killing him.

She suckers Bellamy into coming to help her, taunting him that she could just take all the medical supplies and run. He’s not concerned about her running, even if there’s an outside chance she could still get back into Arkadia with little effort. He’s not confident that _Clarke_ knows it, but Bellamy is pretty sure that Abby Griffin’s daughter could go running through the streets of the Ark bathed in grounder blood, cuff-less and naked and they’d still just get her cleaned up, slap a new one on her and be on their way.

No. You see, Bellamy knows that Clarke is going to stay because Clarke doesn’t want to be anywhere else.

Bellamy goes to help because he wants to see what the little Ark princess is capable of. Battlefield medicine – cutting off a kid’s arm while he’s fully awake using nothing but a sharp knife and a saw – is no easy feat. Bellamy knows that if she makes it through the surgery without flinching, he’s got a hell of a woman on his hands.

So he carries the supplies and, when Clarke directs him to, holds the kid down with his own hands. Even hopped up on the drugs, he struggles – screams and cries until his voice runs out and, finally, blissfully, he goes unconscious.

The whole time, Bellamy doesn’t watch the kid. He keeps his eyes on Clarke’s steady hands, on how, no matter how her eyes waiver or fill with sympathetic tears, no matter how much literal blood she has on her hands, she keeps moving forward. She is, in a word, relentless.

He loves it. 

(Couldn’t be more shocked by it, though. A pampered princess from Arkadia not afraid to get her hands dirty?)

By the time she’s got the kid sewn up and re-drugged, she’s gone through more medical supplies than an entire shipment of Monty’s moonshine is worth. Not to mention a bottle of the liquor itself to sterilize the wound and her supplies. Taking Clarke in is probably not his smartest decision, but he can’t bring himself to feel guilty for it. Not yet, at least.

“You’re real pleased with yourself, aren’t you, Princess?” He asks as they trudge back to the center of the sector, bloody knife in hand.

“I saved that kid.” She tells him, smug with this big smile lighting up her whole face.

Bellamy sighs. “You stopped the kid from dying of an infection. There’s no such thing as saving people out here.”

Clarke laughs. She actually laughs at him. “You make it sound like things are so bad out here with this whole ‘everyone’s going to die’ and the whole ‘you can’t run away from me’ shtick. From what I’ve seen, it doesn’t look so bad.”

“That’s because I know how to keep my sector in order. I know how to run security to keep you all safe. I’ve got teams of people dedicated to keeping the lights on, keeping the water running, coming up with new ways to bring comforts from the pre-war days back. I learned how to barter and build up my resource to make myself indispensable. My sector is this way because I want it to be this way. I know that the tighter I run this ship, the more people – the more people with _skills_ , people like you, I might add, will want to come to it, which in turn makes it run even better. I’m not stubborn and hard-headed because my sector runs well. My sector runs well because I am the way I am, so it’s not changing.”

He sees Clarke turn and look him over out of the corner of his eye. She’s grinning at him. She’s grinning at him and right now, it makes his blood boil. Makes him lose a little bit of his sense.

“It also runs well because we know better than to waste resources on causes that don’t matter in the long run. That kid you think you saved? That kid who, by the way, isn’t even a part of my goddamn sector. I give him a month before he finds some other way to get himself killed and now we’re out the kind of supplies that could save our people.” He spits, voice venomous.

Clarke stops and turns to him, jaw slack with shock and eyes ablaze. “Are you kidding me? Don’t put that on me. You just told me you run this place like a well-oiled machine. Me amputating that kid’s arm didn’t happen without your consent, O Great One. _Nothing_ does, apparently. So tell me, why is it that _you_ were willing to sacrifice those supplies if it’s going to mean someone else’s death?”

Bellamy’s laugh is mirthless. “Because a working cuff from the Ark is worth ten times what those supplies are worth. Because a doctor indebted to me could save hundreds of lives over my lifetime. Because, at the end of the day, having you in my pocket is worth it and that’s why I gave you my consent. You’re right. Make no mistake about it - _nothing_ happens around here that I don’t consent to.”

Clarke glares at him for a long moment. She could point out that she’s not indebted to him – they made this as an even trade, theoretically. She could point out that if her cuff was worth so much, Bellamy could apparently trade it for ten times the supplies she just used and therefore he’s coming out ahead 9:1.

She doesn’t, though, and that might surprise him more than anything else she’s done today.


End file.
